Tiny Tuesday!

We lost a LOT of botanicals during the big freeze, including many potted plants more than twenty-five years old. I have a hard enough time growing things, without this insane climate chipping away at our efforts.

I already showed you that we’d cleaned out Aaron’s garden, and we–meaning mostly Tom–have been trying to take care of the various beds around the house to clean them up and prune things until we have the time and inclination to find more plants for our pots.

In case you don’t remember, this is the book that kicked off Tiny Tuesdays however long ago that was.

And I spotted this page in it.

While I don’t have an actual flower garden, I have been casting a critical eye on one of the beds next to our house where heavenly bamboo grows. It’s not actual bamboo, but the nandina shrub, and people just call it heavenly bamboo. (Not so heavenly if you’re a human, cat, dog, or bird who ingests the toxic berries. Or maybe a little TOO CLOSE to heavenly. Hmmm.)

So I started cleaning it out and pruning, and when things got beyond my reach, Tom did his part to finish. I didn’t take before photos of how overgrown these were, or how the bed was covered with last year’s leaves. But once it was pruned and cleaned out, we moved a couple of the ferns that survived the freeze to join the nandina.

The larger bush had actually been covering most of that window and is now cut down to merely brush the sill.

Another angle. Maybe we’ll put some potted flowers in there, too, later. We’ll see what can take the sun there.

On the other side of the house are the little trellises where my ruellia vines grow. They were a HUGE mess after the freeze, as well as because of other invasive vines that were choking them out. Once again, I failed to take a before picture, but thanks to Tom, they are much tidier now, although the trellises themselves may not last another couple of seasons. The vines will be safe; we can always get new trellises. I hope they bloom again this year, but they may need more recovery time. The flowers are favorites of bees and hummingbirds.

Our fence, on the right, looked just like the one on the left only three years ago when it replaced the old fence after the Harvey flood. Our neighbor replaced hers in the last few months. The sun and climate are so brutal here.

Here are some of the leaves and cuttings that Tom and I cleared out, in the only lawn bags approved by the city of Houston. If you put the wrong bags on the curb, they won’t pick them up and will slap stickers on them to let you know you need the environmentally friendly bags. This means everyone driving or walking by KNOWS YOUR SHAME.

Stay tuned as we continue to reclaim our yard and flowerbeds and replenish our pots.